Clelia Mosher (March 23, 2014) (Feminist Paper Doll Project 2014)

March 23, 2014
Clelia Mosher 

Dr. Clelia Mosher was told by her father that she could not attend university because she was a sickly child and the stress of education would not bode well for a young woman. Instead he created a large greenhouse so that she could stay home and study botany.

Clelia Mosher did study botany and later became a florist thereby saving enough money to put herself through university. Almost as an act of rebellion she set out to disprove the Victorian notion that women were biologically weaker and more frail. In her master's thesis published in 1894, Clelia Mosher proved that women were having difficulty breathing due to poor diets, lack of exercise and constricting corsets rather than a biological insufficiency.

Clelia Mosher went on to medical school in which she worked to dispel myths about women's sexuality (through frank and candid research interviews, women stated that far from being cold and timid as was the prevailing Victorian logic- that women liked sex.)

Thank you, Dr. Mosher for helping us to breathe easy.

More here: http://breathtakinglady.com/dr-clelia-mosher-1892/